


Collateral Damage

by givemeunicorns



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, F/M, Gunshot Wounds, Identity Issues, M/M, Masturbation, Near Death Experiences, Past Brainwashing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:45:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2383754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/givemeunicorns/pseuds/givemeunicorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier was a weapon, precise and deadly. But now there were no handlers, only comrades. His orders and his mission fell from the mouth of a man who called him a friend. He tired his best to be real, to be human, tried to mimic the motions. It didn't work. Finding himself was harder than he'd thought. But there was thing he knew for certain, if he could not be like them, he could protect them. Not a weapon, but a shield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage

**Author's Note:**

> written for the H/C meme on tumblr and it got away from me. Unbeated so all mistakes are my own.
> 
> prompt me on tumblr:givemeunicorns.tumblr.com
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I make no money off this fic. 
> 
> PS there are some agents of shield references towards the end. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, centipede is a hydra initiative trying to make super soldiers.

They found him in Vladivostok, sitting on the hood of a burnt out humvee, picking his nails with the sharp edge of a knife. Steve knew the moment they'd walked into the warehouse, a wreck, that he'd gotten there first. Everyone was dead, necks cleanly snapped or a bullet to the head.

He wore Bucky's face, clean shaven and familiar, though his hair was still long, pulled back into a tail at the nape of his neck. But the eyes that stared back at Steve held only a vague familiarity. He looked up at them as they approached, taking them in, before he went back to what he was doing.

“Bucky,” Steve breathed.

The Soldier looked.

“I'm not him,” he said, “That's not my name.”

“What should we call you then,” Sam asked, at Steve's side.

The Soldier shrugged.

“Whatever you like, I suppose, ” he said, “I'm just letting you know, the man you think I am, I'm not him.”

Steve nodded, a heavy knot in his chest.

“Why are you here,” he asked.

“They had something I wanted,” the Soldier said cooly, “And some of them I knew. The thawed me here once, wiped me, froze me again. They won't do it again. To anyone.”

Steve thought for a moment he saw a shiver run through the Soldier, but wasn't entirely sure it hadn't been a trick of the light.

“I mean, why aren't you running,” Steve asked, reaching up to take off his mask. He was tired, tired to his soul and cold.

The Soldier looked him over, carefully. He heard Sam take a step closer to him.

“You're good at what you do. So am I. It would be much more efficient if you weren't wasting time and resources searching for me and I was spending them trying to evade pursuit. Your people can give me resources and opportunity, but also protection.”

“Protection?” Sam asked.

The Soldier nodded.

“Hydra wants their asset back. Your military wants me put down or put in a cage. I don't want either of those things.”

“What do you want?”

The Soldier turned the question over in his head for a moment.

“I don't know. But purpose is a start.”

~*~*~*~

It was weird, but some how it worked.

Sam started referring to the Soldier as Barnes, and he answered to it easily enough. It was harder for Steve, because even though the eyes don't know him, Steve sees Bucky in everything the man does. He'd tried so hard to just think of him as the Soldier. Because he had shed his tears and grieved for Bucky and found a place in his heart to hold him already. That had all come undone that day on the bridge. How did you grieve for someone standing right in front of you.

“I'm not him,” he reminded Steve, sitting in a safe house outside Berlin. He wasn't looking at Steve, just looking at the moon out the window, with a half dismantled gun across his lap.

“I know,” Steve said, snapping his sketch book closed. The page is full of half finished sketches of Barnes' face.

“I know you want me to be,” Barnes replied, looking at him, and for the first time there is something in his eyes that Steve couldn't place, “I know you hope one day it will change. You shouldn't.”

Steve felt his heart jerk in his chest, like a blow, and frustrated angry boiled in his belly.

“You're wrong,” Steve snapped harshly, dropping his sketch book and raising to his feet. He knew it was probably a bad idea, to show such aggression in the face of the soldier but he couldn't help it. He didn't have enough room in his soul for it right now, he was too raw, too aching to pretend it didn't hurt him anymore.

The Soldier cocked his head in a curious gesture, a testament to the grand control of a precise weapon. He didn't fear Steve one bit, because he knew he didn't need too. Steve couldn't kill the man in front of him anymore than he could have killed Sam, or Natasha. He'd proven that day on the helicarrier and so many times after. The Soldier knew him. Steve ran a hand through his hair, heaving a frustrated sigh.

“You think the person you are now isn't anyone, that _you're_ not anyone. That you are set to some default setting, wiped clean, nothing there. But what you don't see it that isn't a default, it's who your are. Sure, you're not the guy from the film clips, from the history books. But every day I look you in the eye and I know you're my friend. Because it you weren't you'd never have been able to fight what they did to you. You'd never have let me live. You'd never have fished me out of the Potomac. Those memories, of me, of Peggy, your friends, they're yours. You were there. Maybe you think you don't deserve them, maybe you can't reconcile them with what was done to you. Maybe it's because those feelings are unfamiliar now, and you're not sure what to do with them. I don't know. I don't claim to know. But I do know this. It wasn't ever a smart mouth, or a handsome smile, or a being a good marksmen that made you Bucky. It was that, no matter what, no matter how hard it was or how long it took you, you always did right. People could count one you. You were always stronger than any one believed you were,” Steve said quietly.

The Soldier...Bucky...was looking at him, almost sadly, and stood too, setting the gun aside.

Part of Steve wanted to step back when Bucky closed the distance between them, because even though he knew, _he knew,_ his friend was in there, there was still a part of him that remember the feel of metal connecting with flesh and bone.

“I remember you when you were small,” he said, looking at Steve's face like he was trying to mesmerize the lines, “And there are feelings I don't understand and a part of my mind that tells me how easily I could have snapped your neck. I know how to kill you, Steven Rogers. I nearly did.”

Steve shook his head.

“You didn't know me then,” he said softly, “You didn't remember.”

Bucky offered him a sad, almost smile. He pressed his hand, unyielding metal and surprisingly warm, against Steve's stomach, over the scar of a bullet that had ripped right through him.

“Yes I did. And I hated it. Because for the first time I could remember I wanted something. I wanted to disobey. That, in turn, made me want to kill you. You broke me. So I stabbed, and I shot you. I did that because I wanted to.”

Steve caught the metal wrist, remembering what flesh and bone had been like under his fingers. It was the first time Bucky had let Steve touch him, since his return.

“And it was you that pulled me out of the water, you who left me alive in the mud, you who called in my position. You could have drowned me, you could have slit my throat, you could have done nothing and walked away, and I probably would have died anyway. I'm alive because of you. That's how I know you're still Bucky.”

The soldier shook his head, pulled away, eyes vacant and Steve wanted to scream, wanted to grab him and shake him until that familiar gleam came back into his gaze. Instead, he clenched his fists at his sides and watched the other's man's back until he disappeared up the stairs.

~*~*~*~

The Asset let his door shut with a quiet click, careful of Wilson sleeping next door. Sam Wilson was the type of person he thought could be referred to as a 'good man'. He was strong and upstanding and loyal, but the Asset knew Wilson would put him down the minute he was given a reason to.

Steven Rogers was a good man too. He knew that without the books he'd read, or the pictures he'd seen. He knew it from the flashes in his brain, memories of another person's life. He peeled out of his sweater and tee shirt, padded to the bathroom. He meant to turn on the shower, but instead he stopped to look at himself in the mirror.

The face staring back at him didn't belong to him. It was stolen. It wasn't that he didn't want to be Bucky Barnes, he'd tried quite hard at first. Tried to mimic the easy smile, the way he carried himself, like nothing in the world was too big for him to handle. But his grins looked more like grimaces that never reached his eyes, and the only swagger he would every carry in his step came from to difference in weight between the sides of his body. 

So he tried to make the face his own, in what little ways he could. He'd grown a beard for a while, but it had itched and grown in patchy, so he'd shaved it off. He liked the smoothness of his jaw, he'd decided. His hair he left long, because he liked that too, like the way it fell in his face or moved against the back of his neck. He was teaching himself to smile without looking like a wolf.

He touched his face in the mirror, eye lids, cheek bones, lips, and wondered what Steven Roger's saw when he looked at him. How could this face, for all it's similarities, be the one he cherished so dearly? Rogers said those things didn't matter but the Asset wasn't so sure.

He traced the line of his throat with his fingers, and felt the pulse jump beneath his skin, he was metal and wires, but he was flesh too, blood and bone, he reminded himself. A weapon and a man. There was a heart beating in his chest and a brain working in his skull that kept him going. Both had been through terrible trauma, started and stopped, wiped clean again and again, yet still they faster, more efficiently, than most humans.

He had memories, sometimes faint as breath, sometimes so real they hit him like a blow, memories of a life he had not lived, of people he had not known. He knew this body had been loved once, been cherished. He knew there was a mother, who'd smiled at him and cradled him, and slapped the back of his head and shouted at him in romanian or hebrew but almost never english. He knew a father with a bright smile and a form that filled the room with happiness even when he was tired to the bone. He knew a boy with a body like birds bones, fingers always charcoal grey, who bleed more than any person should because, while his spine was crooked, it was made of stronger things than bone. He knew names on dog tags, passed drinks, and laughter. Morita. Jones. Dugan. Carter. He knew girls in thin nylons with red lips that left imprints and matching fingernails they'd scratch down his skin. Those girls had had dreams, and once he had hoped they'd get them. He wondered if they had and why he cared.

He wasn't James Buchanan Barnes. But he wasn't the Asset anymore either, not really. He was a just a man. He pulled the tie of of his hair, let it fall lose across his shoulders.

“Bucky,” he said quietly, feeling the wait of the name on his tongue.

It didn't taste like poison on his tongue anymore, not like those first, dark days after he'd drug himself and his mission out of the river. Maybe, he thought, he could make it his one day.

~*~*~*~

Steve watched Bucky break a man's neck without even pausing in his steps. He still called him Barnes out loud, but in his head and his heart, he called him Bucky.

Sometimes he would see glimpses of his friend sometimes, of the boy he'd grown up with, slept next to, loved. Barnes would look at him strangely sometimes, would talk about things Steve himself had half forgotten. He always said “Bucky”, never “me”, told them like stories about someone else, that Bucky were not him, just a character in tale, a made up man. Yet he talked about the way Steve always had a smear of charcoal across his forehead, where he brushed his bangs out of his face. Pulling the cushions off Bucky's couch, laying on the floor and listening to the radio shows. The game they played, to see how many faces they could make at each other in mass, before the nuns caught them.

“I was drafted,” he said one night, looking at the Chicago skyline out their hotel window, “I didn't tell you. I said I enlisted.”

Sam's brows went up, and Natasha dropped her gaze. It was a sour thing, a lie he'd believed, until history books had told him otherwise.

“Yeah,” Steve said tightly, “You did. You had your reasons.”

It wasn't until he laid down to sleep that night that he realized Bucky had said “I”.

~*~*~*~

Prague was cold and raining and their mark knew they were there. He hit the asset with his sleek car, going about eighty. There was nothing the Asset could do but brace himself and roll with the impact. He slit the man's throat later.

It was Romanoff, who came to check on him, watching him from the doorway with her calculating eyes. The Spider didn't speak much, neither did the Hawk, but the Asset found them companionable. He respected them. 

Her eyes roved over him, wet from the shower and still shirtless, taking in the damage, processing and cataloging. She was a similar creature, made by similar means. She is wary of him and he of her, but the understood each other in a way that didn't need words.

“That must hurt,” She said after a moment, taking in the bruising on his ribs and shoulder.

He shrugged.

“I can function,” he replied, “I was programed to block out pain, same as you.”

She looked away from him for a moment, and it registered in his mind that he had hurt her, made her think or feel something that had left her scared. He didn't like that. He'd put two bullets through this woman,on two different occasions. Yet she had helped him, guarded his back. She was deadly and precise but still human, still vulnerable in her way, maybe not so much as the others. He didn't like hurting her, but human emotions were delicate and confusing to him.

“What about pleasure?”

He looked at her quizzically.

“Do you remember what that feels like, physical pleasure? Or did they make you block that out too?” She asked bluntly.

The Asset's skin felt suddenly tight, warm. Uncomfortable.

“Why does it matter?”

She shrugged a shoulder.

“Because pain and pleasure can teach you a lot about yourself. They show you your limits, your boundaries. They show you things you didn't know about yourself.”

The Asset regarded her, confused. Of all of them, she was the one he could not pin. She was like him, knew his way. The shadows and secrets were her place. But in her eyes he saw something...not pity, understanding maybe? The Spider had been a thing made by monsters, a carefully crafted weapon. What had it taken her to become Natasha, Natalia, Natalie?

“There are no more handlers to tell you when to sleep, when to eat, to shove you into a doctor's hands when you need it. You have to learn to know yourself. You're more than read outs and numbers now. It takes time, finding the good and the bad, and where you can function on the scale,” she said, running a hand through her mussed curls, “Just a thought. You should get some sleep. And ice that shoulder. It's already swelling.”

“I thought you said there were no more handlers, telling me what to do?”

She gave him a sly smile.

“They're aren't. Just comrades.”

~*~*~*~

There was Cabo, Manila, San Antonio, New Orleans. Chicago again, Santa Barbra, and St. Louis.

Los Angles though, left Steve wrecked. In Los Angles, the agent they were pursuing took a kid hostage, a young, dark skinned girl, faced pressed to glass in terror. Steve and Bucky pursued him on foot, weaving through the tight streets, while Sam took off through the air. Steve should have known, should have _known_ , the bastard would have back up. It wasn't until he heard the squeal of tires, the rev of an engine, that he realized. A sleek black sedan was tearing between lanes, gunning for Bucky, ready to pin his body between the car hood and the median, too tall to jump, with the speed and force that could crush a body even as strong as their own.

He called to Sam, but he was already changing course, cutting across traffic, sliding over the hoods of moving cars. The sedan's engine revved again and Steve caught a glimpse of the man, mad-eyed, as he passed. He got and arm around Bucky's waist, yanking him hard and tumbling them both, ass over ears, over the hood of the car and into the road, as the car careened into the wall with a horrifying crunch. Steve lifted an arm in instinct, curling his larger form over Bucky's protecting them from the spray of glass, plastic, and fine metal.

For a moment, there was a recognition in Bucky's eyes when they looked at him, a flicker of something, maybe memory, maybe something else. But it melted into confusion in an instant, a metal had pushing as his chest as the Soldier regained his footing and gave chase again.

In the end, it was Sam that stopped him, dropping onto the hood of the car, pulling the girl out through a broken passenger window, took off for the sky with her tucked against his chest. The surprised driver careened across lanes, hit a semi head on. There was enough left of him to identify, but not much else.

In the aftermath, in the settling dust and the confusing cloud of voices and bodies that followed a trauma, that Steve started to calculate the pains of his body. Road rash, a cracked collar bone, already healing under his skin.

“Why did you do that?” Bucky asked, brows furrowed in what Steve thought was disapproval.

He sighed, yanked off his helmet, ran a hair through his sweat damp hair.

“Because that car would have killed you.”

“You jeopardized the mission,” Bucky said harshly, almost angry. It was jarring, seeing any strong emotion pass over the man's face these days. Part of Steve wanted to be upset over that over that, sad, or angry in his own right maybe. But for now, he was just too damned tired.

“You're my team mate,” he said shaking his head, “and my friend. Keeping my team alive is my mission.”

The Soldier took in the words with a look of confusion and opened his mouth as if to reply. But instead, he dropped his gaze to the pavement, turned and walked away.

~*~*~*~

It bothered him, what happened in Los Angeles.

Rogers...Steve, had put himself at risk, their job at risk, to save him. It spoke one, of how much he trusted Sam Wilson. Trust was still a strange concept to the Asset....to Bucky. Names were important, he was finding. He was trying to use them, to make them feel as natural in his brain as they did on his tongue.

It bothered him too, how familiar a situation it had been. Steve had done it before, saved Bucky from something bigger than himself. He had too many memories of a cold metal table but he had a feeling it had been the first time they had put a needle in an arm he no longer had. He remembered fire, a body so much bigger than it been before, Zola, and a man who's face peeled off to reveal a brilliant red skull.

Thinking about it, plucking at the thread, woke a feeling in Bucky's chest he did not wholly understand, nor could he place. It was a strange feeling, bone deep and intense, one he associated mostly with Steve, in memories and dreams. A desire to shield and protect the man, that he could put no word or reason to. He didn't like unknown factors and this one sat heavy as a stone in his chest.

He laid back against the bed in his room, trying to sort through his brain. He'd taken to cataloging the memories into order. Pre serum. Post Serum. Post Bucky. Post Asset. It made them manageable, made it easier to file away the darkest parts, the ones that made him break things, that some times brought up tears, foreign, uncontrollable, unwanted.

Steve was always making him feel things, think things, do things that defied the logical programming he'd come to rely on. There was something distracting about the squareness of his shoulders, the curve of his mouth, the softness in his gaze when he was happy. Simple, individual human features, things that should not have been so hard to ignore. Then there were the dreams, half formed thoughts that struck him as he fell asleep or as he woke in the mornings. Not memories, not really, not of things that had happened, more things he must have at one time wanted. Things part of him wanted still. The feeling of Steve's skin under his lips, between his teeth, just hard enough to bruise. He wondered how the blonde would taste on his tongue, what those wide hand would feel like gripped around his hips, his thighs. What muscle and bone would feel like under his own fingertips, clawed under his fingernails.

He closed his eyes, and slowly, slowly let the thoughts slid to the surface of his mind like a ripple on the water. The memory of small hands of his bare skin, from a time when such exposure had been exciting instead of frightening. He remembered the brush of cupid's bow lips in the hollows of his collar bones. Pretty girls with pretty eyes and hands and mouths and laughs. Pretty girls who he hoped had lived pretty lives, who'd thought of the man he'd been fondly. He remembered long hours laying at their sides,afterwards, talking about life. There was a surety in him that he couldn't place, that he'd loved those girls well, had left them smiling at his back when he'd walk away. He wasn't sure why that settled him, maybe it was simply knowing he'd been a good person once.

Behind his eyelids, he imagined different pair of hands. Long fingered and spindly, almost too big for the body they belonged to. He knew those hands had touched him a thousand times but never the way he was imagining now, sliding down his spine, counting his ribs with charcoal stained fingers. He imagined a mouth made for smiling kissing his own, tracking the line of his pulse, down his sternum, the sharp valley where hip met thigh.

He wasn't used to the feel of his own flesh yet, the way his breath picked up at the thoughts. His tongue darted out across his lips, and he wondered what Steve's lips would taste like. For a moment, the thought bothered him. Wanting someone that way it was jarring. He remembered such thoughts, such desires, but they had seemed foreign in this new time. They had belonged to someone else, a different time, a different life. But letting his own hands slid lazing into the waist band of his sleep pants, palming his cock, he knew it wasn't. He'd done this many times, with the same thoughts on his mind.

He sighed, willing his muscles to relax as his fingers brushed the head, mapping his own flesh, the right places and pressure to make his breath catch. The pants become confining all too quickly, and he kicked them off impatiently. Free of the cloth, he stroked himself experimentally. He tired to think about the phantom hands that had once touched this body, once loved him in their own way, all the things they had done or things he had wished for. His metal fingers were pleasantly chill and smooth against his nipples, felt good trailing along the flesh of his lower belly, the sharp valley of his hips. There was a tingling at the base of his spine and he began to grow hard in his hand. Fingers of flesh and bone brushed the head with the lightest touch, that made him shiver and catch his lip between his teeth. He cupped the warm flesh of his balls, familiarizing himself with the weight in his hand. He touched the soft flesh behind his sac and lower, testing the resistance of his own flesh, pressing the tip off a saliva slicked finger into him self. He was fairly sure he had had that done to him before, not just by himself, or girls. Those thoughts were hazier than the rest.

An image came to his mind, unbidden, of large hands of his skin again. Steve Rogers was an issue in many ways. He was once a mission, a target, now he was a team mate. He was a threat, strong enough and fast enough to hurt Bucky, if he wanted, and yet the idea of hurting him, made Bucky's stomach sour. He saw the scar sometimes, a shiny stretch of pink tissue beneath his ribs, a twin in the muscle of his back, and the sight of it woke the echoes of regret that kept him awake some nights. The Asset had hurt a lot of people who didn't deserve it.

Steve was memory too, a solid form that had pulled him off a table in Austria and out of a million foxholes, both before and after he'd come to Europe. He was a small body and a sharp mouth, that had once made James Buchanan Barnes want to do better, want to be better, because he had no right to do any less. Now, Steve was a ghost as well as a mirror. His survival a constant concern, and if Bucky let his eyes linger to long sometimes, he found himself caught in thoughts he wasn't sure he understood. Desire. Longing. Affection. All things he knew the names for but not how to convey.

He pushed the thoughts down, trying to focus instead on the body of the man himself. What those strong hands would feel like touching his skin, wrapped around his cock as his own was now, stroking him slowly, firmly. He thought about the weight of Steve's hard and solid against his own. He wanted to card his fingers through the blonde hair, kiss the curve of a shoulder, the curve of a spine. He wondered what that mouth would feel like one his skin, fingers or cock inside him.

His orgasm startled him, zipping up his spine like lightening. It was sudden, jarring and intense, his spine bowing as he arched into his own grip. He made a sound, something between a yelp and a whimper, bit his lips to silence himself. He lay there in the aftermath, shivering, weak-kneed, and tired, trying to process and catalog. Romanoff had said said discovering his limits was of value. But he could not get beyond the fact that he'd gotten himself off thinking about a man on the man he'd tried to murder, more than once.

Steve Rogers had always been a source of confusion. Now, he'd gone and made it even worse.

~*~*~*~

New Orleans was the strangest city Steve had ever been to. He was in love with it almost instantly. It was old in a way New York wasn't, with it a sort of life he could feel in his bones. There was a history of tragedy here, a legacy of destruction, of war, of slavery, of disaster. But some how, the city seemed to have not only endured, but thrived, clinging to the identity it had forged on it's own with an iron grip. A music, a poetry, a language all it's own. It was a monument to the pain that could be endured by a human soul, and reminded that life went on despite. It was a balm to Steve's worn out soul.

Their mark here had been an easy one, a man who had given himself up rather than run. No blood, no bodies. It gave them all a chance to breath. The safe house was one of Starks, an old place in the French quarter he'd bought for Pepper. Sam and Natasha went dancing. Sam loved a crowd, loved being in the close press of people. Natasha liked to be able to fade into a crowd. Steve was content to to sit in his room and sketch, listening to the street sounds below. He fell asleep sitting up in his bed, to the sounds of jazz that almost made him feel like he was back in Brooklyn, were it not for the smell of wisteria that grew on the balcony outside.

And woke to the feeling of the bed dipping with an unfamiliar weight.

Steve startled, knocking his open sketchbook to the floor as he reached for his shield, but a cool hand on his arm stopped him, and he felt the tightness in his chest fade.

Bucky was seated next to him on the bed, naked to the waist, hair loose and looking at Steve with that cool, distant curiosity.

“Hey Buck,” he said, still sleep fuzzed, running a hand through his mussed hair, “What's going on?”

The last thing in the world he expected was to find Bucky's mouth slotted against his own in reply. He went stiff for a moment, unsure of what do. He'd wanted to kiss Bucky on the mouth since he was fourteen, had once or twice, with the excuse of practicing for girls. But this was different and nothing like he'd expected. Bucky's mouth was warm and alive against his own, a gentle pressure, the brush of a tongue. Then it was gone. Bucky had pulled away when Steve did not respond in kind.

“Am I doing it wrong?” he asked, voice clinical, logical, and yet oddly innocent, “I'm just going from memory. I thought I was good at it.”

Steve felt himself blushing all the way to his ears.

“You were. You are,” he spluttered, rubbing his now sweating palms on the comforter, “It's just, I wasn't expecting it.”

Bucky nodded, and leaned in to kiss him again. Steve almost let him.

“Bucky,” he hissed, turning away, “What is this about?”

Bucky leaned back, gaze shifting, while he thought the words over in his head.

“I see the way you look at me. I've done my research, I know about the journals they found and archived after your supposed death. You can read them at the library of congress. I did. You told Peggy, about how you felt for her, and for me. Your sketchbooks are in the Smithsonian. I see the way you look at me sometimes, I remember that look. You looked at her that way. I can see the way your breath picks up sometimes, your pupils dilate. You are reluctant to touch me and even more reluctant to let go. Your reactions to me read as attraction. You want to kiss me. You want to have sex with me,” he said simply, “And I want to kiss you. I want to have sex with you. The others are gone, they don't need to know if you don't want them to.”

Something crumbled a little in Steve's chest. He did want to kiss Bucky, he did want to sleep with him, had for so long. But the man sitting in front of him could only read the biology, didn't seem to compute the feelings Steve held under his ribs. Steve had loved Bucky for so long, resigned himself to the best man, the best friend, even now. He wasn't sure he had it in him to give that, to give into something that could only be physical. He didn't trust himself enough, not to ask what Bucky might never be able to give again. Affection. Attachment. Love.

“You're right,” he said, catching Bucky's wrist, where it wrested on his arm, “I do want to kiss you. Do you know why?”

“Because you love me.”

Steve smiled, a sad quirk of his lips.

“Yeah, I do. I love you a lot, and I have for a long time. I do want to....have sex with you, but I want other things too. Things I'm not sure you can give me. It's not your fault. It's just how it is. How I am. Something that, I know, if I do this, I'll want from you. It's not fair for me to ask for them.”

Something akin to sadness passed across Bucky's face.

“You want me to love you.”

Steve nodded.

“Why does that have to do with this,” Bucky asked, trailing a hand down Steve's chest, “It's a simple, biological need, one you've shown interest in. One I am trying to become familiar with. You have done a lot for me. I can do this for you. Will you let me? I won't do anything you don't consent to.”

Steve ran tired hand across his face. This was stupid, and it selfish, and he'd probably hate himself for it later. But he was tired, tired to his bones, and had been for so long. Sam had been a balm, Natasha too, of his wounded soul. Still, Bucky was here, sitting by his side, offering him something he'd desperately wanted, something he still wanted. Maybe not as fully as he wanted, but here it was. He wasn't strong enough to turn that away.

But he nodded anyway, let an arm slip around Bucky's waist, his palm settle at the base of Bucky's spine. He was warm and real, alive. There was a dull ache building under Steve's ribs, he'd never thought he'd touch this skin again, and never like this.

Bucky took his mouth again, more aggressive this time. Steve opened to the gentle insistence of his tongue. The touches were a bit too mechanical, a bit too thought out. It should have made Steve sad, maybe in the morning it would. Instead, he leaned back into the pillows and pulled Bucky with him, fingers curling loosely in the long, dark hair.

The metal hand caught his weight, holding him over Steve while he kissed Steve, touched his hair with a gentle curiosity. Experimentally, Steve let a hand slid up Bucky's spine. Bucky mimicked the motion, sliding a hand over Steve's arm, down his chest, with the same soft pressure. It hit Steve like a blow to the ribs. Bucky didn't remember this, he was just parroting. The hand settled suddenly, heavy and warm over Steve's stomach, over the fading scar, where the Winter Soldier's bullet had torn right through him. A sound, somewhere between a sob and curse, clawed it's way out of him before he could stop it.

Bucky pulled away with out hesitation, sitting up, pulling away. Part of Steve wanted to reach for him, pull him back down. Instead, he rolled away, feeling rug out and confused.

“I hurt you,” Bucky said after a moment. He wasn't looking at Steve, just down at his own hands. He looked confused, frustrated and Steve felt the ache in his chest burrow a little deeper.

“No,” Steve started, shaking his head, trying to find the words to explain.

“Yes, I did,” Bucky pushed back, voice slightly raised, and that startled Steve. Bucky's hand slid back benath the hem of Steve's shirt, pressed on the scar hard enough to hurt.

“I hurt you. I shot you. I shot Natasha. I threw Sam out of the sky. I did that,” Bucky said sharply, “Me. You can't say I'm Bucky but not the Asset. Because I am. I hurt you then. And I'm hurting you now.”

He pulled away, eyes flashing with some thing that looked curiously like guilt. Stiffly, he stood, hands curled tightly at his sides.

“You are confused. You're tired. I thought physical intimacy would be helpful to you right now. I was wrong. I apologize,” he said quietly.

He was gone before Steve could find his voice again.

~*~*~*~

He was trying, which was the most infuriating part of the whole thing. Bucky was trying his best to be what they needed, to be useful. He'd tried to initiate psychical contact with Steve, which had failed miserably, left the blonde strangely raw in his presence for days. He did not miss the days of being Hydra's asset, didn't miss the pain, didn't miss the numbness, the helplessness. But sometimes, he wondered if it wasn't easier. Handlers there when he woke and when he slept, people trained to give him details, to put the right weapons in his hands. He knew what human emotion looked like, to how to calculate it, another variable in the equation of murder. People reacted certain ways to certain stimuli and that dictated behavior, allowed him to be one step ahead of the game. Except that it wasn't anymore. It was easy, it wasn't variable. Things that should have made Steve happy, relaxed, relived, just made him sad. He didn't like it when Steve was sad. He didn't know why, but it kept him awake nights, worry about Steve Roger's well being and why it concerned him so much.

He had gone to Sam Wilson first. Sam was better than anyone at reading people, it had been his job. In a lot of ways, it still seemed to be. Bucky had been wary of Sam at first, he was an unknown factor, a man with whom Bucky had only bad history. Sam had no reason to like him, no reason to be civil with him, let alone kind and understanding. Sam, like so many things he'd woken to, was more than he'd expected. Sam Wilson was a soldier, knew how to follow orders and to give them, he knew how to operate under pressure. Competent hands paired with a compassionate soul. Sam listened, never made him feel damaged or stupid, even though he felt that way all on his own. Sam Wilson listened, and understood. He viewed Bucky as a prisoner of war, understood why he did the things he did, never asked him to be a man he wasn't sure he could be.

Natasha was much the same, because she had been like him once. She never said it, not really, but he could see it in her eyes, in the shadows of her words, that she had once lost herself. She had had to relearn humanity. She knew what it was to be an outsider to the experience, that no matter how much you learned to mimic the patterns, people like them would always stand a little apart from everyone else. She knew that emotions were confusing, troubling, frightening. She knew it was easier for their kind to process everything by logic, by shadows, by lies, as they had been trained to do. She didn't judge him, or fear him when he shut down, regressed to the mean. She knew how exhausting it was. She knew that sometimes, it was almost impossible for weapon to be human.

So he strove instead, to be useful. He had always been a weapon. A weapon was designed to kill, but also to protect. He pulled the right triggers, shed the right blood, kept his team in one piece and helped mark off the names in the files in red. He could be an extra set of eyes, a finger on a trigger, a hand on a knife. He moved fast and silent, without remorse and with brutal efficacy. He couldn't balm the wounds, but he could make sure they stayed alive.

~*~*~*~

Istanbul was warm and dry, the streets crowded with bodies and the air rich with the smell of street food and people. It was bright place, and Steve filed away in his mind that he'd like to visit it in better circumstances.

Steve caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, a body darting across the rooftops. Bucky. Somewhere, in one of the close cafe's Sam was sitting, watching the world from behind a dark pair of glasses. Natasha stood a few hundred feet ahead of him, looking at brilliant colored pottery. Steve's eyes scanned the crowd. Their mark was a tall frenchman, with greasy blonde hair and a nose like pig. He wove through the streets with a sort of arrogance, as if he were so far above those around him. He trying to chat up a young girl, maybe fifteen, who was selling woven baskets. The girl scowled at him and asked him again if he was going to buy anything. He leered at her, taking her obvious disinterest as a challenge. It made Steve's skin crawl.

A body flittered past him, bumping him in an attempt to get out of the way of a mother and her brood. Red haired, pretty and blushing as she clutched her camera, Natasha offered him a sweet pardon in french, before hurrying away. She stopped, brow furrowed in confusion, and turned into one of the narrow alleys. The mark grinned wolfishly, and followed her, allowing Steve to make his move.

He slide down the narrow confines of the ally, he'd memorized the turns the night before. Natasha would lead the man away from the Bazaar, away from the potential to take hostages. He saw a flash of blonde hair and loud shirt turning the corner ahead of him. The hairs stood up in the back of his neck, and he ducked, just as a fist hit the stone were his head had been.

The man was big, almost as broad as steve, with the same fair hair and smashed face as their mark. He came at Steve again, striking high and growling like a bear. He was strong but he didn't fight well in close quarters. Steve had been fighting in alley ways all his life. The newcomer tried to wedge him into a corner, but Steve danced away, but the meaty fist popped him just above the ear. His comm fizzed and blipped once, before dying completely. Steve dodged another blow, stumbled away, landed a solid blow to the man's torso. The bastard just smiled. He realized his mistake too late. He was back into a dead end. Natasha was no where in sight, but there was another large, menacing figure waited for him.

Steve swallowed hard, sending out a prayer that Natasha was all right, and squared up.

~*~*~*~

Bucky was running full tilt across the roof top, eyes darting through the shadowed maze of alley ways. He'd heard the crackle and pop of a radio shorting out. Natasha and Sam had called in, but Steve's line was silent. He was in trouble.

There was something startlingly familiar about it, even with a knife in his hand, half a dozen more tucked away on his person, the thundering of his heart under his ribs and the near panic of his brain shouting “FIND HIM”. He remembered darker, damper back alleys and a much smaller body hitting the pavement.

The sounds of the bazaar grew more distant, giving way to another sound, the heated, pained sounds of a fist fight.

There were two of them, big, beefy men with fair hair and sneering mouths. Bucky saw the ominous, dull glint of a gun at one man's side, but he never made to pull it. Steve, bloody faced, fists up, was backed into a corner, no room to do anything but block blows. His chest was heaving, he was getting tired. They were beating Steve with their fists, with hits far stronger than the average thug, because they wanted to. Because they could.

He didn't spare another thought before he leapt down between the buildings, landing like a cat of the gunman's back, arms wrapping tight around the man's throat. A hands shot up, grabbed Bucky's metal wrist hard enough that the plates creaked under the pressure, sending the tingling sparks up pain up into his shoulder. He growled, trying to tighten the hold, catching a flash of silver and yellow in the man's forearm. He swore. He remembered working with centipede soldier's before, though most hadn't lasted very long. The were too volatile.

An arm reached back, caught Bucky by a handful of hair, and lunged forward, flinging the super soldier off his back and into a wall. Bucky rolled to his feet, gaze flickering off his opponent just long enough to catch sight of Steve, pushing back out of his corner now. But the man was reaching back now, for his gun, eyes flickering between Bucky and Steve, shouting something in German at his compatriot.

Using the wall for leverage, Bucky lunged, knife in hand. His knees it his target in the chest, knocking him them to the ground. There was pressure against his belly, and got a fist full of the man's lank, blonde hair, and tugged. There was a pop, a white hot pain that ripped through his belly, just blow the navel. But the Winter Soldier had been taught how to work through pain, programmed to finish the job at all costs. He brought the knife down across the would be assassin's throat, with quick cool, efficiency. To a bystander, the whole fight would have lasted less than a minute. For Bucky, it may as well have been a lifetime.

There was a chocked shout and a snap, the heavy sound of a body hitting the ground. Steve didn't kill lightly. Bucky sat back on his knees, breath heaving, knife slipping out of his fingers. There was blood on the front of his shirt, a rapidly speading stain on the front of his jeans. It hurt to breath and he was so tired.

“You okay,” he asked, looking at Steve over his shoulder.

Steve nodded, pale and shaken. His face was bloody, lip busted. But his nose was already starting to right itself. Steve was okay. Steve was safe. Mission complete. Bucky felt a smile tug at his lips. He was pleased. That was new.

Sapped of adrenaline, of all reasons to stay upright, felt the pain hit him like a brick wall, he pressed a hand to his stomach. The bullet had pierced him in almost the same place he'd shot Steve, not long ago. Natasha would have said it was poetic. He felt as if he was losing control of his spine, his whole body curling in on itself. He'd never been hurt like this without a handler whispering orders in his ear. Return to base for repairs.

But now, there was an arm across his shoulders, pulling him of his mark, away from the bodies. Warm, familiar.

“Bucky,” Steve asked him, in that firm tone Sam always called his “big damn hero” voice , “Bucky, stay with me, where are you hit.”

Bucky's mouth felt stuffed with cotton. There was a lot of blod on him. He wondered how much was his own.

There was a sharp tap on his cheek and the fog cleared a bit. Steve was kneeling now, Bucky cradled against his body like he meant to shield him from the world.

“Come on Buck, stay with me, where are you hit?”

“Gunshot wound to the lower abdomen,” he sighed, “high probability of organ damage.”

“Shit,” Steve groaned, “Just try and stay with me Bucky. I'm going to radio Sam and Natasha. I'm going to get you out of this. You stupid jerk.”

“Punk,” Bucky panted, lips grinning again. The words were familiar, funny. Steve made a chocked sound and the smile faded.

Steve shrugged out of his long sleeve shirt, pressing the waded cotton against the hole his stomach, and everything whited out for a little while. When he came back to himself, he was leaned back against Steve's chest, Steve's voice speaking in his ear, Sam's answering back. Sam was para-rescue, Bucky remembered. This sort of thing had been his job once. Sluggishly, he found Steve's wrist, tacky with Bucky's blood, still holding the soaked shirt in place.

“Hey,” Steve breathed against his skin, “You back with me Buck.”

Bucky nodded and he felt Steve let out a long breath.

“You're a real idiot you know,” Steve told him, without any real bit in his voice, “I had them on the ropes.”

“Had to protect you,” Bucky slurred.

His fingers tightened on Steve's wrist.

“You've been doing it since we were nine, I don't know why I thought you'd stop now,” he said, and his voice sounded sadder than anything.

“Did it again,” Bucky groaned, “hurt you.”

“No Buck,” Steve hushed, running a hand through Bucky's hair, “You saved me. I don't like seeing you hurt. Sam's on his way, he called med-evac. We're going to get you out of here.”

Bucky shifted, tried to sit up. He was going to bleed out in this alley, or he would likely die of whatever damge the bullet had done, was doing in his guts. He didn't want to die like this, on his back. He didn't want this to be Steve's last, real memory of him.

But the pain hit him like freight train, stole his breath, all his muscles seizing at once, and he dropped back against Steve's chest with a chocked sound.

“Shh,” Steve hushed him, “ hold still or it will hurt more.”

Bucky panted, lip caught between his teeth, frustration outweighing the pulsing ache in his stomach. He turned his head into Steve's shoulder, pressed his lips to the curve of the other man's jaw. It wasn't much of a kiss, but it was the best he could do.

Steve made a sound like a sob and Bucky could have swore Steve was praying.

~*~*~*~

There was still blood under his fingernails. He'd scrubbed them nearly raw and it still wouldn't come out.

Steve sighed heavily, and leaned back in the stiff hospital chair, feet braced against the metal bed frame. He looked like hell and he knew it, but exhaustion had made a home in his bones the last couple of days.

Bucky had done almost nothing but slept, which Sam said was good, but Steve hated it. They pumped his system with drugs to make the pain bearable, but to steve it felt a little like a betrayal. Bucky hated needles, hated being medicated. He'd woken up once, failing an violent, after the doctors had taken the bullet out, patched up the places it had had ruined. They'd had to take part of his intestine. It had taken all three of them to coax him out of the corner of the operating room, Natasha had peeled the scalpel out of his hand, Steve carried him like a child, back to bed. He held him when Sam had slid the needle back into his vein. He wouldn't let any other doctor's near him.

He'd woken up a few times since, bleary eyed and incoherent, just long enough to drink some water, or reach for Steve's hand, then he was out again. There had been a moment where Steve was sure Bucky would die for good this time, and that Steve would finally be there when it happened. Looking at Bucky now, still sallow and pale, chin stubbled and face lax with deep, drug-induced sleep, Steve wasn't sure how he would have handled it, or if he could have have. He'd had to loose Bucky twice, mourn him for years. Sam seemed to get it, pushing cups of coffee into his hands, settling down in a chair with out a word, so steve could catch a few hours of much needed sleep.

There was a rustled of fabric that starled Steve, his nerves already beyond fried. Bucky's head was turned towards him on the pillow, eyes blinking sluggishly. His brows furrowed, seeing Steve's fingers linked with his own on top of the blankets but he didn't pull away. He reached up with his metal hand, touched the tubes in his nose, in the bend of his elbow, and for a moment Steve was afaris he would yank them out. Instead he just sighed, looking sleepily over Steve's form.

“You look like shit,” he croaked, his voice like gravel and old nails.

Steve snorted, shook his head.

“You're one to talk, gorgeous.”

Bucky shrugged.

“I got shot. What's your excuse?”

A small, sad smile tugged at Steve's lips. The man in the bed next to him was more like Bucky Barnes right now than he'd been in seventy years. Steve wondered if he still would be, once the meds wore off and he was back on his feet. He reached out, brushed the dark brown back off Bucky's forehead.

“You nearly died.”

“Wouldn't be the first time,” he said and Steve felt his face fall. Even in his drowsyness, Bucky caught it.

“I keep doing it,” he sighed, “I keep saying things and doing things that I think will help you, and they just hurt you instead. I can't be like I was, before. I've tried. He's gone. But I don't want to be just a weapon any more. I want to try but...I'm sorry. I'm not good at this. I'm trying. To be a good person.”

“There's nothing to be sorry for Buck. I know you don't see it, you think it makes me said, and sometimes it does because I want you to be able to do things because you want to, not to make me happy. I want you to do things and want things, simply because you want them. I know you'd do anything for your team, any of us would. I don't like seeing you hurt, but I know it's part of the job. I just wish you would see yourself to be as valuable as I do. You're not expendable Bucky. Not to me, not Natasha or Sam. Your ours, you're part of our team, you want to protect us, we want to protect you too.”

Bucky took in the words, staring at the ceiling for a long time.

“Steve,” he asked after a long moment, “Can I ask you for something?”

“Anything.”

“Will you kiss me?”

Steve's cheeks colored.

“Can I ask why?” he replied, thumb tracing circles along Bucky's knuckles.

“In that alleyway, I was pretty sure I was going to die. I wanted to kiss you, I tried. I thought if I was going to really die this time, I wanted that first. But if you don't want to...”

Steve was already moving, on his feet and leaning over Bucky to press a kiss to his forehead, his cheeks, finally his mouth. It was gentle, almost chased, but it left Bucky a little short of breath none the less.

“When you get better,” Steve said, smiling; the real, happy sort now, “I will kiss you as long or as often as you want, if that _is_ what you want.”

“And for now?”

“For now, get some sleep. I'll be here.”

 

 


End file.
